To Map a Mage's Journey
by Esther-Channah
Summary: On her way back from Namorn, Daja finally has some quiet time to reflect on the twists and turns her life's journey has taken.


Disclaimer: All characters and locales are the creations and properties of Tamora Pierce. I am receiving no financial remuneration for this work of fanfiction.

Thanks to Kathy, Debbie, and Morbane for the beta!

Timeline: Immediately following Will of the Empress.

For: Geekhyena

**To Map a Mage's Journey**

Daja sat on the thatched roof of Discipline cottage and let one leg dangle over each side of the peak, just as she often had when she'd lived at Winding Circle. It was a good illusion, the creation of her foster brother, Briar. Her pragmatic side reminded her that she was actually lying in bed in an inn on the border between Olart and Anderran on her way toward Summersea. For once, she willed it to silence. If she couldn't be at her forge, smelling the pungent fragrance of molten iron as it blended with the salt air of the Pebbled Sea, hearing the whoosh of the bellows and the clang of her hammer as she pounded out horseshoes, plows, or the occasional dagger, feeling the pleasant heat from the fire and the occasional refreshing breeze from outside, then she was perfectly happy to believe that she was relaxing in familiar surroundings in the warmth of a summer afternoon.

It was an excellent illusion. She'd never have guessed that Briar had it in him. As a green mage, his power was over plants, but then they'd all become adept at visualization in the process of learning to meditate. Still, Daja doubted that she could have made something this perfect. Without consciously thinking about it, she let her right hand cover the living metal half-mitt that grew over her left hand. That, too, had been a product of their combined powers: Briar's green magic had added the most to her metal-craft, but there were elements of Tris's and Sandry's magics in it as well. She considered the illusion once more. Was there anything of her magic that had gone into it? Although Sandry had untangled their magics years ago, they each still retained traces of the others' powers. Sometimes, it was hard to know where one power left off and the next began.

Her staff was always nearby, even in an illusion. She picked it up now and examined the brass cap. A Trader's staff told its bearer's life story to those who knew how to read its engravings and wire inlays. Here was the sign for Third Ship Kisubo—her first family; her first home. The staff told of the shipwreck that had left her an orphan and the sole survivor. Then there was a stark blank space, a gap that spoke of the long months she had spent as a _trangshi, _cast out by people who believed that the bad luck that had killed her family had rested in her, and who thought that this was the only way to keep the misfortune from spreading. At that time, scared, lonely, thrown in among people she had only thought of as _kaq_s, she had thought that her world had ended. How could she have known that it was just beginning?

It was rare for a Trader's staff to speak of non-Traders, even if they were _saati_. But had it not been for her foster siblings and her teachers, she might never have realized that, even as a _trangshi_, she had value. She mattered. She could learn smith-work without being made to feel even more of an outsider. In fact, when she had first ventured into Frostpine's domain, right from the beginning, she had felt as though she had belonged. Yes, some people at Winding Circle had been _kaqs_ who had shunned her—not for being _trangshi_, but for being Trader. Now, she could appreciate the irony. Her own people had told her that she could no longer count herself one of them. The others had as good as told her that they would never count her as anything else. But her new family had made it clear that she belonged—Sandry, even when she had been positive that she wanted nothing of the kind. And so, around the blank space that denoted her time as a _trangshi_, she had inlaid a copper-wire spiral that denoted Winding Circle. Here was a loom for Sandry and a lightning bolt for Tris. Briar was a flower, Frostpine a flame. Niko, Lark, and Rosethorn figured in that border as well.

Daja turned the staff slightly to see the next bit. Here was the day that she had first created living metal, born of the combined powers of herself and her foster siblings. Here was her encounter with Tenth Caravan Idaram, and here was how she had racked up enough _zokin_ in saving that caravan to have her name purged from the rolls of the _trangshi_. Here was her choice to remain _lugsha_ instead of rejoining her people. And they were her people, they always would be... but it had taken her some time to recognize that she belonged to other people, as well. And she belonged to herself. She might, at different times, call herself Trader or smith, mage or student, but such classifications were limiting. If there was one thing that she had learned as an ambient mage, it was that there were many ways to forge a magical working, and while convention and tradition should often be respected, there were times when they could blind a person to other possibilities.

Daja sighed. The last inlays that she had added told of earning her mage's medallion and her decision to go north. She really did need to set down the rest of her story. She shook her head. So much had happened since then, so much good and so much bad. There had been a time when she had thought that there was nothing worse than being cast out from the only people and life that she knew. She'd been so... young, then. She shook her head. Life wasn't just Trader tea and almond-rosewater paste. It was fermented bread soup and over-boiled vegetables, too. To ignore the unpleasant was not the Trader way, any more than it was to offer empty assurances to a sick person. And even if she no longer lived among Traders, she still followed Trader ways.

She closed her eyes. Even after all this time, it was hard to think of what Ben had done with gloves of living metal. She reminded herself of the leg that she had crafted for Polyam from the same substance. Two items forged in joy and hope. One gift had returned the joy in kind. The other had spawned horror and heartbreak. When she reached the afterlife, on which side of her ledger would the _zokin_ be highest?

She didn't know the answer to that one, but she suspected that it would be worse if she tried to pretend that her gift had played no part in the Airgi Island bathhouse fire. The fire hadn't been her fault, of course, but Ben could never have made it so devastating were it not for the gloves. She could not pretend that she hadn't contributed to that particular pot merely because she hadn't realized what Ben had been about. To do so would be almost as bad as a lie.

Daja took another breath. The life-account told by a Trader's staff could not include every event and every detail, but it did need to record those events that had shaped its bearer. Her time in Kugisko had done that. Rizu had done that too. Daja had been a teacher. She'd been a fool. She'd learned of love. She'd learned of loss. She'd had to face hard truths, unpleasant truths, necessary truths. If she pretended that the events through which she'd learned them hadn't happened, she was as good as showing that she'd never learned them at all. Growing up meant facing reality. It meant, she felt with a pang of regret, knowing when to leave a perfect illusion behind and face a flawed reality.

When she opened her eyes, Daja was back in her room at the inn. For a moment, she wasn't sure what she'd done with her staff, but then she remembered that she'd stowed it under the bed. She rolled onto her belly and slid her top half off the mattress. Yes, there it was. She picked it up and sat up in bed. There really was a good deal of room left on the brass cap, she thought.

Once more, she reached under her bed, this time to retrieve her _suraku_. She opened it and pulled out a sheet of paper and a stubby piece of charcoal. She thought she knew the design she wanted, but she would sketch it first before she took a filed blade to the brass cap of her staff. She opened a different compartment of the _suraku _and ran her fingers lovingly over a coil of silver wire. With it, she would tell of her time in Kugisko and Dancruan—all of it. Discovering new mages and teaching meditation; learning the nature of fire, the stab of betrayal, the flame of love, the ache of loss; finding out what it meant to be a hero and a monster and how, sometimes, it was easy to mistake the one for the other...

Daja set the tip of her charcoal stylus against the heavy paper and began to lay down her design.


End file.
